Computer help really,really, needed,,Im desparate!!!

[coadman]

Hey guys,,this is what happened. Im running Windows XP pro on a new pentuim 4 computer. I had "lots' of windows open, minimized down below. I was also in the process of copying a DVD movie in my burner. While all of this was going on, I had two file folders open on the desktop and was drag and dropping files between the two, when this error message popped up(and I wished I could remember exactly what it said, but I cannot)...completly blue screen with this message....."windows has stopped or shut down because of some error, to save possible damage to your computer, if this is the first time you have seen this message please reboot your computer, if this has happened before and computer will not reboot you will have to open bios and blah, blah, blah"(thats what I dont remember). Anyway, I rebooted,,the computer booted up, did its checks on devices and drives, then when it normally opens up to Windows XP, I recieve this message instead...."error loading operating system". Thats all that comes up,,if I reboot,,same results. Anybody have any ideas? My wife uses this computer to run bookkeeping for our local water district, and guess who was going to do end of month billing this weekend! I'm in BIG trouble, unless some one can help me troubleshoot..I would appreciate any attempts to offer assistance.
thank you,
coadman

[Han]

When Windows starts loading press F8 and choose Last Known Good Configuration. If that doesn't help, boot into Safe mode and try to use System Restore...

Recover a system that will not start

[coadman]

When Windows starts loading press F8 and choose Last Known Good Configuration. If that doesn't help, boot into Safe mode and try to use System Restore...

Recover a system that will not start

I cannot BOOT into help mode. When I press f8 when the computer is checking devices,etc,,,,,I get switched to a screen that asks to "please select boot drive",,,I have the options of selecting my floppy drive, my cd drive, my dvd drive, or either of my hard drives. I tried selecting my cd drive and putting in my windows XP cd, and that takes me to "windows setup" as if it wants to load windows xp on the computer. I did click ok once and it installed some drivers, etc,but then took me back to a c: prompt. Nothing happened. When I rebooted,,without pressing f8, I end up at the screen saying "Error loading operating system" Any other ideas????
thanks,
coadman

[hoxlund]

good reply Han, yeah its probably gonna come down to you doing a system restore, like from a day previous to what happened

[coadman]

good reply Han, yeah its probably gonna come down to you doing a system restore, like from a day previous to what happened

If I cannot even get into "safe" mode, then what am I supposed to do???
coadman

[burninfool]

Hate to say it but it sounds like you will have to do a clean install,hope your wife had her documents backed up on a disc.

[Rudy]

If your wife files are in the main C drive be careful that you do not overwrite them when doing a clean install. Use another hard disk if possible or somehow transfer ger files from the hard disk with the broken operating system into another computer.

[Dartman]

You have to select the real boot drive XP is on then it should come up in safe mode. If you do a upgrade install it MIGHT fix the problem and you'll be OK but it also might just hose the whole thing and you'll end up with a formatted drive with a clean install and none of your old stuff left.
If you hit f8 it should say something like safe mode, safe mode with networking support, safe mode command prompt. I alsways go with networking support so maybe my cable will still work in case I need to redo drivers and things. Your boot drive is probably device 0 and you might accidently have your mother board command to pick boot device activated also, I can do that on mine by hitting f10 then I get the available boot device menue so I can restart to older versions of windows I still have on my other extra drives, nice for a total meltdown so at least I can get back in and online to figure out the broken one.
System restore will 90 percent of the time fix your problem if it's not really horribly busted.

[Han]

You have to press F8 (several times, if needed) the second after Windows starts loading from the hard drive. That is after BIOS checks the hardware...

[hoxlund]

just hold that F8 key right after you hit the power button on computer, keep holding that F8 key like its going outta style

your computer might scream at you, but just keep holding, just keep holding, la la la la, just keep holding

[Han]

He has to "hold" F8 AFTER bios finishes the setup checksum, otherwise a BIOS' boot menu pops up!!

[hoxlund]

bios boot depends on motherboard model

[coadman]

Problem still not solved, but I know what is wrong. After fiddling with f8 for quite a spell, I got into a windows setup menu, which let you select which drive to boot from,,floppy, cd, dvd, harddrive. I finally put my XP disc into the cd drive and entered widows setup. Harddrive is partitioned, into two, C & D. The C partition is apparantly damaged/corrupted. I tried to repair, and nothing happens. I placed this harddrive in another computer with XP loaded, and tried to access this harddrive. The "good" "undamaged" partition was available, but the "corrupted/damaged" partition, didnt even show up in device manager. Unfortunately all the data I want to salvage is on the C drive with the corruption. Luckily my wife had not done any "books" on the new harddrive(I found out this morning), so I installed my old harddrive into the computer, and she is able to run her monthly billing. I delivered my computer with the damaged harddrive to a neighbor this morning, who works next door at a computer shop, so he is going to take it to work tomorrow, and drop it off, with the hopes that they can somehow salvage the contents of the damaged partition for me. Doing a search on Microsoft about the error message "error loading operation system", it talked about problems within the Bios about updating, or something. I will have them check that also. Thanks for all that tried to help.
coadman

[Dartman]

Well the good thing is the super critical data wasn't on it yet. Hopefully you don't have anything else that is ireplaceable on it. If those guys are real good and have some of the heavy duty disk recovery tools they might be able to at least recover your data then reformat you back to new and you can add back what you want later. It doesn't hurt to do a real backup with a DVD burner or a tape drive every so often or at least save the data that can't be reinstalled on a fresh install to cdr's or something. That's why I have leftmy previous versions of windows on my old drives. It might be out of date a bit but I can boot to them and get online or do recovery work and all my older software and stuff is on them to use.